How Much is Inside Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?

Reese's peanut butter cups are hands-down the best candy in the world. Everyone loves them.

Peanut butter cups were invented in 1984, when a high-school principal walking through the halls with a chocolate bar ran headlong into the school librarian, who was snacking out of an open jar of peanut butter. Their collision resulted in a chocolate bar encrused with peanut butter, as well as a wad of peanut butter dotted with chocolate shards.

Delicious.

Just mixing peanut butter with chocolate isn't good enough. The chocolate-to-peanut butter proportions have to be right. Otherwise you end up snacking on chocolate which is under or over-peanuted.

For many years, I depended upon Reeses to get the chocolate to peanut butter ratio correct, but then something unexpected happened: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Miniatures.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Miniatures are better. They are smaller, individually foil wrapped, preciously minute peanut butter cups. They have the same delicate fluted edges.. ok, maybe not quite as many fluted edges, but they have the same effect in my mouth.

What's the difference? How could the miniature cups taste better? Is it the peanut butter?

A visit to the store revealed the two sizes of Reese's Peanut Butter cups: Regular and Miniature. Also, it revealed the "Snack a Pack" cups, the "King Size" cups, "Snack Size", and "Big Cup" sizes. Unbelievable!

Slightly larger are the Snack-A-Pack cups. Once you unwrap them, they are noticably smaller than regular peanut butter cups. An eight-pack sells for $1.27. Each weighs 15.4 grams. That's about 16¢ each or 1.03¢ per gram.

Snack-a-pack cups - $4.67 per pound

A bit larger than that are the King Size peanut butter cups.

They should probably be renamed the "Emperor of the French" Size, because they are also smaller than regular cups. A four-pack costs $1.09. Each weighs 19.9grams and costs 27¢ each. That's 1.37¢ per gram.

King Size cups - $6.20 per pound

Next, verging on, or perhaps as large as regular cups, there are the bags of "Snack Size" cups. A bag of 14 cost $3.19, or 22½¢ each. The one I weighed was 21.4 grams, coming at a price of 1.07¢ per gram. These cups were just a hair shy of full size. In fact, it may have been within the acceptable weight variation of a full-sized peanut butter cup. Why would they make five different sized cups, only to call these full-sized clones "Snack sized"?